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Lady Gaga Biography

Lady Gaga is a singer and songwriter who got her start as a proud seeker of pop culture celebrity. Her debut album, The Fame, stated her goal and achieved it all at once.

Born into a New York Italian family, Stefani Germanotta went to Convent of the Sacred Heart (the same high school as Paris and Nicky Hilton) and attended New York University. A self-professed fan of the glam rock of David Bowie and Queen, she made her way into the New York club scene and wrote songs for the Pussycat Dolls before scoring her own record deal under the name Lady Gaga. In 2008 she released The Fame, with its driving and danceable hit singles “Poker Face,” “Just Dance” and “Beautiful Dirty Rich.” While delivering the dance hits, Lady Gaga became just as famous for her devotion to fantastical costumes and and outrageous fashion, as she sported a look that was equal parts Cher, Joan Crawford and Liberace.

Lady Gaga stayed in the headlines with the EP The Fame Monster (2009, with the hit single “Bad Romance”), remixes, and popular videos such as “Telephone,” with Beyoncé. Her second full studio album, Born This Way, was released in 2011. It was followed by Artpop (2013) and in 2014, Cheek to Cheek, an album of standards sung with classic crooner Tony Bennett.

By 2016 she had won six Grammys and a Golden Globe, among numerous other awards. That year she sang the national anthem at Super Bowl 50, and was nominated for an Oscar in the best original song category for “‘Til It Happens To You,” her collaboration with Diane Warren for the 2015 film The Hunting Ground. The next year, 2017, she headlined the Super Bowl halftime show.

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Lady Gaga’s fans are known affectionately as Little Monsters… Early in her career she spelled her name Gaga or GaGa, depending on whim, but in later years seems to have settled on Gaga, with the second ‘g’ in lower case… According to a 2009 report in The Times of London, she “works with a collective called the Haus of GaGa, who collaborate with their muse on clothing, stage sets and sounds. ‘In this industry, you get a lot of stylists and producers thrown at you, but this is my own creative team, modelled on Warhol‘s Factory. Everyone is under 26 and we do everything together.’”